On second thought, perhaps you should look, ladies. Take a good, hard, look. More than half, perhaps as many as two thirds of abortions are performed not because the mother truly wants one, but because a husband, boyfriend, or paramour pressures or forces her into it. This is what they are calling your right to choose. Take a good, long look.

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

“If you let yourself become distracted by what is coming from her mouth, you miss all that is revealed in her face, which tells the whole, and very different story. A month after the abortion — with the dramatic change in hairstyle that so many women effect when emotions are high and they need to feel in control of something — watch Emily, then. The light is gone from her eyes. The seeming disconnect between pc-fed head and instinctive heart is laid out in breathtaking and stark incongruity, even down to the shadows, the blue note, the lack of energy. Devastating. Cognizant of it or not, she is a mother in grief.”

I watched it with the sound off, because I didn’t think I could sit through it otherwise, and I saw the same thing Ms. Scalia commented upon. She looked tired and sad. I’m surprised that the people who made the video didn’t try to correct for this with a retake. Small graces I suppose.

It’s this sort of thing that really brings home the smack-in-the-face truth of that line from Scripture, “If they will not believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe Lazarus even should he rise from the dead.”

The capacity of the human mind to shut out reality truly appears to have no limits. Indeed, according to the Church, that is precisely what Hell is: a mind shutting out everything in reality, even God Himself, from itself.

I’m not sure I can read this. When I heard about the Gosnell horror story, I knew it was immensely important. I knew I had to understand what was happening. I could not force myself to read more than the barest outline of the facts. My revulsion prevented me from doing more.

It’s a bizarre way to win: do something so horrific that those who oppose you can barely stand to think of it, become a dark sun they cannot look upon.

When I heard about the group of Catholic priests who held a funeral for some of Gosnell’s victims and gave them names, I nearly cried. That they finally had names . . . I can’t explain how or why that affected me so. I thank God for the men who did that. Whether I ever follow Catholicism or not, those men have my enduring respect.

I had a girlfriend many long years ago. She told me she had three abortions with an earlier boyfriend. I was unable to look at her the same afterward and I ended our relationship. Just writing about it now I feel the same sense of physical sickness and soul deep shock as when she told me.

Murdering our children will earn this nation a Judgement. Carthage was destroyed and sown with salt and they were pikers compared to us. What do we have coming? Will we who have stood aside and allowed it to happen share in that Judgement? Honestly, I only hope that my children and grandchildren are spared for myself I’ll accept what comes. We all deserve it to some extent.

I’m not sure I agree with this. Abusing the Supreme Court, the left has made infanticide legally almost untouchable. Once they’ve done that, almost the only means of action is violence, which we are rightly reluctant to embrace.

I’ve struggled with this. I reject violence but what if I am wrong? What if this is so egregious that legality is not defense for us or for those who practice it? I used to compare it to the Holocaust but then I realized that Nazis had nothing on the abortionists.

I don’t know what my obligations are because I see all my options as being either futile or illegal.

It is a nightmarish and soul-wrenching irony that Hitler could have achieved a level of death to make even his Holocaust pale if he had simply convinced the European Jews that they should murder their own offspring….convinced them as the Progressives have since convinced black inner-city Americans to slaughter their own young.

How does legality of abortion directly impact your ability for you yourself to live and promote a virtuous life? This is an obligation; do you really consider it futile? (in the context of reforming abortion law and practice)

How would violence help to change the minds of the many who are in favor of the practice? It seems to me that the progressive mindset is specifically geared to interpret direct opposition as evidence in favor of its assumptions. Thus, argument, debate, and armed resistance will achieve nothing alone.

To win over such closed minds, examples and role models are needed, not contention and violence.

“How would violence help to change the minds of the many who are in favor of the practice?”

If even 5% of those who believe abortion is a grave evil, an abomination, gave up on the system and decided the best way to deal with the situation was to kill the creatures who kill infants A) We would genuinely be in the situation the Left constantly claims we are in. B) It doesn’t matter how many were jailed, the continuing violence would effectively shut down abortion clinics.

How would violently shutting down abortion clinics change the minds of those in favor of the practice?

It’s as ridiculous as assuming that Christians would no longer believe in god if widespread violence against Christians caused many to stop attending church for fear of harm.

Under discussion is not how to force people to act against their beliefs or fear to act according to their beliefs, but rather how to alter beliefs. My claim is that use of force (and even rational debate, in the case of progressives) is an especially poor way to do so.

Ah, but our Faith is a fighting one. There are many examples in the Bible of violence being used in a Righteous fashion, in a righteous cause. Do you think your only response to the “Cultural Revolution” should have been attempts to change minds, despite the millions being murdered? Sometimes we are called to act, and Rainforest Giant is right to worry about why we have not lifted a hand to stop our “Cultural Revolution”, which has gone on for years longer then the Chinese one…..

I agree that we are all called to act. It is the nature of the act we are called to perform that is in dispute.

Have you considered what ‘lifting a hand’ would entail? Would you adopt the thug tactics of the Red Guards, throwing aside the civilized, non-violent means of conflict resolution available to citizens of a constitutional republic? Short of that, what violent actions would suffice to end abortion?

What you propose is nothing but a counter-Cultural Revolution. It seems to me that to solve this problem by applying violence, you become what you so despise.

Unlike the Cultural Revolution of China, it is an option for you to ‘live and promote a virtuous life,’ and this can be a primary factor in changing the minds of those in favor of abortion, and thereby the legality of the practice through democracy. This is the civilized (and I would think, Christian) way.

By ‘live promote a virtuous life’ I do not mean engage in contentious debate with supporters of abortion. I mean becoming an example and role model for others through active participation in and support of your community.

It is not civilized to stand aside while someone is murdered. What is the civilized response when the government engages in mass murder? What is the civilized response when children are fed to moloch?

The tactics of the ‘Red Guard’? Why not say ‘Satan’ and have done with it. You wish to put any real action so beyond the pale it is unthinkable. Which ‘thug tactics’ did Christ adopt when he scourged the money lenders from the temple? Which thug tactic did he adopt when he told his followers to buy a sword? You know a sword, a weapon with one use killing other men. Yes by all means call active resistance to evil, evil because then you need not worry yourself with it. Good Christians would never do that.

Now instead of calling rescuing babies and stopping murders the action of Satan perhaps you should consider what Christ would call it. Would Christ stand aside while children were murdered by the millions? When he returns as the ‘lion’ instead of the lamb will he be pleased because we forswore those swords he commanded us to sell our coats to buy?

the other option is to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to overturn any Supreme Court rulings within some fixed time after the verdict, upon the three fifths majority vote. It will prevent only the most unpopular rulings to remain the law of the land.

Yes, but the bar for passing a constitutional amendment is, for better or for worse, set very high. With our country as large as it now is, with 50 states, it’s nearly impossible to imagine passing one, especially if it were known that part of the intent is to take down one of the left’s most treasured “rights”, infanticide for any or no reason.

That Nancy Pelosi described not just abortion, but late-term abortion as “sacred ground” is one of the most repulsive things I have ever heard. Sacred to whom, Moloch?

I haven’t as of yet, but I am a regular listener to his radio program. It’s the only radio I listen to and he explains the ins and outs of the issue very thoroughly. I agree with him wholeheartedly that it is the only way out of the current nightmare that Washington, both political parties, and the courts have inflicted on us. Without some change in our system, violence, whether it’s next year or a hundred from now, will be inevitable.

But who would make up the constitutional convention? What would be their goals? I am certain there are people drooling at the prospect of removing certain pesky items like the right to bear arms or perhaps wishing to add something like ‘freedom from religion’ to our Constitution.

And for a country that has districts with ‘rotten boroughs’ and such obvious voter fraud as 100% voting for a particular candidates over entire districts can we be sure the convention itself will be honest?

True enough our current system has no enforceable checks or balances nor any way to compel them to perform their duties when they refuse to. For example protecting our borders, enforcing our laws, investigating corruption. All those things our government currently is less than useless for I want to see a mechanism where the citizens could force the executive to do its duty or be punished.

I agree, whatever difficlulties invovled in a convention, at least something can be done. There is currently no way to move forward in our current situation with two corrupt political parties , an intrenched bureaucracy and increasingly politicized courts. Maybe this would be a topic that would be fruitful to open for discussion here in the future.

There’s nothing to stop Congress from tightening the reins on their jurisdiction, from what I understand, but I’ll defer to the lawyers since I’m just a lowly computer nerd.

So many problems seem to stem from the fact that Congress is spending way too much time concocting sweeping, draconian, doomed Rube Goldberg experiments in social engineering and not enough time exercising their checks and balances on the other branches.

We’re in this weird kind of limbo where the President flouts the Rule of Law, fundamental Constitutional principles hinge on whatever mood Anthony Kennedy happens to be in on that day and Congress is too busy undermining the citizens and the Republic to pay any attention, unless they are explicitly enabling these behaviors.

I would support that. The court has become a tool of the Enemy. On the other hand I am not sure that the entire system has not become a tool of the Enemy since we have explicitly rejected God in our system.

We should have never allowed the yammerheads to remove God from our public life and discourse. We should have never yielded on so much as public prayer or a cross at a memorial. Our nation was made by Christian men. It only works when it is administered by Christian men.

But we seem to have a nation in which two-tenths of the electorate view abortion as a feminist sacrament, while another five-tenths view it as a regrettable but necessary safety valve in the event that -their- daughters are raped, or -their- ultrasounds show an anencephalic infant.

In a nation where a decisive number of voters had already been convinced of the justice of the pro-life cause, the problem of legal abortions (especially late term abortions) would already have been solved.

In a nation where they have not yet been so convinced, no solution which relies upon the political process can succeed.

No man of good conscience who views the results of an abortion can condone such. Only by willfully sticking their heads in the sand can they acquiesce to the evil.

Most except the most extreme would already outlaw all late term abortions. We need not worry about the most extreme as there is no changing their minds.

It is because they can call people ‘not people’ that they can allow themselves to continue this slaughter. So next step? The elderly who are no longer productive. Not people. Already happening in countries in Europe. The disabled? Not people. See above. etc.

This slope is so slick with blood that they are rocketing straight into hell. They complain and protest because a ‘pet psychic’ says a dog is abused but feel no remorse in calling people ‘not people’. The time will come when we either stand up and call murder murder and treat the murderers as such or we will find that children who are disabled in institutions will just ‘fade away’, the elderly in rest homes will ‘fade away’ and babies born with defects will ‘not make it’.

It is already happening. They tried to kill my mother several times by withholding treatment, medication, hydration, and food. We had to physically go to the hospital to feed her make sure she had a working IV and give her her medicine. Several times the nurses tried to give her too little of her prescriptions despite Dr’s notes and orders.

They refused to put her on a transplant list. They claimed she did not match the criteria. We showed them where she did by their own records. The arrogant ass in front of dozens of witnesses said, ‘no she doesn’t match the criteria’ and wrote new criteria she thought, my mother did not match into the documents by hand. When my wife pointed out that she did match the criteria she said, ‘so what she’s still not getting on the list’. The reason they were so anxious to kill her? They prescribed two cancer drugs that destroyed her liver. They wanted her dead.

They tried to kill her several times before they succeeded. They were continually telling us to increase certain drugs or eliminate others that would have killed her in a couple days. They deliberately denied her hydration on two occasions we caught it each time and she recovered quickly. The whole story is a horror story.

When abortion became legal she predicted that hospitals would begin euthanasia she just didn’t know she would be a victim.

The thing that scares me is not so much that abortion supporters refuse to acknowledge that an unborn child is a human being, but that more and more of them will agree with that statement, followed by “So what?”

While we are making some strides in reaching people, there are many who are more and more wholeheartedly and unashamedly embracing evil. Mr. Wright, I don’t think your rhetoric is too extreme.

Ironic typo there… but I agree with what you are saying. Leftists are really big on individual freedoms, but never for anything that a decent person would have any interest in, and never for anything that is constructive. Their idea of “freedom” is the “freedom” to do evil things, and their idea of “charity” is to force the rest of us to deal with the consequences.

I know for myself that my first inclination was outrage. Such outright display of evil and depravity boils my blood. However, after sitting there for a second and pondering, I realized that my outrage is not at the poor delusional woman herself but rather at the Evil One behind it all. She has no idea of the damage she has done to her soul and yet the Enemy has her laughing and giggling all the way to her doom.

How terrible a foe we face and yet, as I must keep reminding myself, how much more terrible a God we serve, whose fury will crush that Serpent of old and not soon enough.

You are very kind, and I am truly grateful for your words and your prayers.

At the same time, I cannot enjoy the easy consolation of believing my babies are with God. I can hope (and I make a valiant effort) and I can pray, but I can’t know, and that’s a bitter cup.

We simply don’t know what happens to children who die without baptism. There is plenty of theological speculation, ranging from the wicked and Calvinistic to the sentimental and glib. But we don’t know. In their funeral rites, the Church entrusts them to the merciful love of God, and prays for them, which is all She can do.

Dear GeekLady,
I had one miscarriage when I was around 40, and in my foolish young years I used contraceptive methods that might have provoked early expulsion of embryos. Since I came back to faith, every time I think, or am reminded, of abortion, I remember that and repent my crimes, but I have always known only my soul bears the scars. There is not one shred of doubt in my heart that the little ones are very near to the throne of the Living Love and we can ask for their intercession. I did not know Dante’s statement quoted above, but my thoughts were similar. I do not regard limbo (if there is such a thing) as a sort of exile between two worlds, but as a special place in heaven, with no lesser degree of beatitude than any other state of holiness. How could an innocent slaughtered by any horrible evil means end elsewhere than in heaven where he belongs?

This has been happening for 40 years. A 9/11 every 18 hours. In your explanation as to why you were not a Libertarian, you seemed to take notice of this teeny tiny blip in the number of innocents slaughtered daily. How many innocents were killed in abortion clinics on the same day of the marathon bombing.

Straining yourself over something gnatsty, while becoming morbidly obese (or perhaps filling your lungs with smoked) camels should be something you would at least notice.

The reason I am both a libertarian and, for lack of a better term, ultrapacifist, is that if I learned any art of war, or decided that violence was a solution, I would be forced to act to stop it.

In the war between heaven and hell, at the bema seat, I will plead that I was a conscientious objector – I did not learn the arts of war so had no ability or authority to end this Hell, as well as being both a pacifist and libertarian, so I pray for peace and an end to the slaughter as that is what is permitted. If I understand your position correctly, you advocate coercion and violence – forget the government as proxy – therefore why do you not act to end this hell using the means you consider perfectly legitimate? When you advocate using the sword, you must explain why you fail or refuse to use it.

You would probably complain that I am soft on terrorism, liberalism, Islam, and a large number of other things. My answer is that I do not assassinate abortionists or bomb clinics because that would be below the threshold of what would be a just action (as in the difference between just and unjust war). But if I cannot pick up a sword to end this hell, on what basis can I use it to end those trivial evils like 9/11?

I can imagine a sci-fi story where a few babies were aborted, and the response was the Patriot Act and whatever would parallel the TSA yet where muslims bombed and killed 4000 daily but were protected because in 1973 in that universe the Supreme court ruled that bombs were covered by the 1st and 4th amendment, and those challenging the million deaths in terrorist bombings per year were considered strange. But would abridge their liberties fearing even one abortion.

Ah, but you are not a Pacifist. If you were, you would be risking yourself trying to stop the fighting so easy to find in this fallen world. Standing between the two sides in the Syrian Civil War, perhaps. No, you are a parasite, living safely because of men doing violence on your behalf. Sad.

But to you, tz, I ask, can you in good conscience put off that work you know is just? I mean to say not that you should take up material weapons (our worst enemies are not flesh and blood) – but certainly it seems difficult to say to God “I would not fight, I would not chose a side.” You may indeed object to unjust means; but not to just ends, no?

I didn’t feel what you were saying was clear. What did you mean? Where do you stand? How will you fight? You are a soldier of Christ or a slave of this World.

Don’t worry folks. From where I stand, abortion is on the decline, given past measures passed by various states to impose proper medical regulations on the clinics. I wrote about how we can get rid of abortion without having even vote for a politician:

I finally steeled myself to both read the article Mr. Wright gave us the link to and at least quickly glance at the truly hideous and appalling pictures of the butchered babies at the end of the piece. It reminds me too well of how I once forced myself to watch a video, in color, of a butcher (he certainly wasn’t a DOCTOR in the true sense of the word) scooping out bits and pieces of a murdered baby (including tiny arms and legs).

All direct abortions are esp. sickening and depraved MURDERS. And anyone whos says an abortion is not murder is a liar.

The Gosnell Movie is almost fully funded after Kickstarter kicked it out. It’s the story the media tried to ignore. There are just 4 days left and it is almost fully funded so please help if you can. Gosnell Movie | Indiegogo

Also rather horrifying is the parents responsible for pushing abortion on their children.

I skipped the images and video, as what had been seen cannot be unseen. I have been through 6 pregnancies with attendant sonograms and delivered twins at 29 weeks. There is little I need to see to know the humanity of the unborn, and I need brain bleach just from verbal descriptions.

[…] depravity that is abortion. In the comments at John C. Wright's journal, Rainforest Giant shows the way:I had a girlfriend many long years ago. She told me she had three abortions with an earlier […]